US Floats New Israel-Lebanon Truce Plan as Fighting Intensifies

The United States has proposed a new plan aimed at tamping down the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio urging Lebanese and Israeli leaders to embrace a sequenced de-escalation. In calls with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Rubio laid out the core of the initiative: Hezbollah must first cease all attacks on Israel, and in return Israel would refrain from intensifying strikes in Beirut, creating what one US official described as “space for gradual de-escalation and an effective cessation of hostilities.”

The proposal, however, immediately ran into the complexities of Lebanon’s fractious politics. President Aoun, who maintains a channel to Washington, attempted to push the plan forward, but Lebanon’s long-serving parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri — a key Hezbollah ally who frequently acts as its political interlocutor — flatly rejected the sequencing. According to officials cited by Axios, Berri insisted the burden lay with Israel to stop “shooting first.” His stance encapsulates a core obstacle that has bedevilled past truce efforts: Hezbollah and its backers view any demand for a unilateral halt as an attempt to disarm the group’s self-declared right to resist Israeli occupation, while Israel sees any pause as a breathing space for the militia to rearm.

The diplomatic push comes amid a significant widening of the war. Israel has expanded its ground invasion into southern Lebanon and, according to the Axios report, is seeking a US green light to conduct massive aerial bombardments of Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Washington has for weeks urged restraint on such strikes, but officials now signal that position may erode if civilian casualties in Israel continue. Compounding the picture, the White House is concurrently attempting to salvage a long-sought nuclear agreement with Iran, Hezbollah’s patron. President Donald Trump has returned a draft memorandum of understanding to Tehran for substantial revisions, linking the Lebanese track to broader regional leverage — a move that critics say muddles the immediate ceasefire push.

Viewed from Washington, the initiative risks collapsing under its own contradictions. The sequencing demand, however logical on paper, collides with a regional dynamic in which Hezbollah’s arsenal is seen as a counterweight to Israeli military superiority, and any pause is exploited by both sides for tactical advantage. The earlier round of direct ambassador-level talks in Washington on 16 April, after which Trump briefly announced a ceasefire deal that quickly unravelled, underscores the gap between diplomatic choreography and battlefield reality. For now, with neither side signalling a willingness to relent, the Rubio plan may prove as ephemeral as its predecessors.